I’m a little late with my alternative income for last month. I tell myself it’s because I’ve been busy, but more likely it’s that the numbers are down. After taxes, I cleared $1,411.34. That’s still a good number and pays for a large amount of my necessary expenses (i.e. rent, food, insurance, utilities, etc.), so I’m taking a Stuart Smalley approach. Even though it’s down around $500 from previous months.
It’s not surprising to me that the number is down. I could throw out the easy excuse that it’s the economy… I even believe that to some degree. I’ve been focusing my efforts on my a full-time job (a contract job that pays over six figures) and training a new puppy. I usually hate trading time for money… it doesn’t scale in the way I want it to if I’m going to achieve financial in a few years. However, if I can leverage the money from my full-time job to other profitable enterprises, it’s a move I have to make… especially in this economy where cash is king.
This month isn’t shaping up to be much better, but I’ve made a few connections at Finovate that may pay off down the line.
If your fallback plan is a job that pays rather well, then it’s not as if you’re between a rock and a hard place :)
Do you see a seasonal adjustment to traffic/revenue? More traffic when people are stuck inside in the winter and less traffic when the weather is nice?
How about a table that shows us how your income has fluctuated over time?
I’m a new reader and don’t know what your “alternative income stream” is. What are you doing to earn that money?
Kosmo and Joshua, I should have given this information. I’m bad. Let me fix that (and hopefully do a better job of explaining it next month.)
Kosmo, I think the downturn is seasonal, plus the poor economy, as well as my inability to focus on growth with other priorities in life. Call it the triple whammy.
I had a table, but it’s horrible out of date… because I’m Lazy. Here’s the old table. I included my half of my necessary expenses there: things like rent, food, utilities, insurance, etc. I only had half becuase my wife has a job and contributes her part as well. In 2008, I switched to a goal, rather than expenses, but haven’t reach it, yet.
Joshua, my defining alternative income post will give some insight as to what alternative income is. It’s not exactly passive income, but includes income earned from this blog and investment dividends. It’s more or less cash flow from anything that isn’t a typical job. The majority of the number you see comes from this site. My investments mostly go to retirement accounts (especially when the blog was my main source of income – i.e. no other job). I do have other sites like Lazy Man and Health and a few other small sites (that aren’t under the Lazy Man brand so I’m not mentioning them here) that bring in some money.
Thank you for the clarification.
This is a pretty decent alternative income stream if you ask me. Since some portion of it is dividends I would guess that your income would look better from a quarterly perspective if you mostly own stocks that pay in the second and third month of the quarter.